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Bits Blog: Instagram Does an About-Face

After an uproar over privacy concerns, Instagram's co-founder, Kevin Systrom, said the service would revert to its previous terms of service.

 

Opaque Instagram ad policy change riles users

Instagram

Instagram, the popular photo-sharing service that Facebook bought this year, is the target of a storm of outrage on Twitter and other sites after a change in its user agreement hinted that it might use shared photos in ads.

 

Police: Apple Maps has dangerous Australian error

Apple Maps

Australian police are warning the public that errors in Apple's much-maligned mapping application are leading drivers headed to the southern city of Mildura to take a potentially "life-threatening" wrong turn into the middle of a remote state park.

 

Why Instagram pulled pics from Twitter

Images from Instagram, the photo-sharing app that lets user spruce up their work with a slate of arty and retro filters, no longer show up on Twitter, a popular place to share them.

 

Browser Wars Flare Again, This Time for Phones and Tablets

Mobile Browser War

...It’s an echo of the so-called browser wars of the 1990s, when Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator fought for dominance on the personal computer. This time, though, the struggle is shaping up to be over which company will control the mobile world — with browsers on smartphones and tablets. Entrenched businesses are at stake. Google’s browser-based business apps, for instance, threaten Microsoft’s desktop software, and mobile Web apps threaten Apple’s App Store.

 

'The Daily' doomed by dull content and isolation

It was too expensive. It lacked editorial focus. And for a digital publication, it was strangely cut off from the Internet. That's the obituary being written in real time through posts, tweets and online chats about The Daily, the first-of-its-kind iPad newspaper that is being shut down this month.

 

iPod creator: Ex-boss won't be missed

At least one former Apple exec wasn't surprised or sad to hear the news that iOS chief Scott Forstall is leaving the company... Several reports since then have suggested that Forstall didn't get along well with some other key players on the team and angered CEO Tim Cook by refusing to apologize for Apple's maps application.

 

Windows 8 Sales Hit 40 Million; Will App Developers Follow The Money?

Windows 8

This week, Microsoft announced that it sold a truly bananas 40 million licenses of Windows 8 in the new operating system's first month of availability. Even though some unknown portion of those sales are to manufacturers like Dell and Hewlett-Packard -- who then have to convince consumers to purchase their laptops, desktops, hybrids and whatnots -- and even though certain analysts insist that this marks a "disappointing" debut for the new Windows, 40 million licenses in one month is still an incredible number.

 

10 Mobile Apps to Be Thankful For

In the myriad of things to be thankful for on this fine American holiday: family, friends, home, the ongoing generosity of volunteers continuing to push through to provide mutual aid in the ongoing devastation of Hurricane Sandy.

 

Google error cancels Christmas

Android App

Is Google in a hurry to get 2012 over with? Probably not. But that didn't stop the snarky headlines after it was discovered that a buggy app in the new version of Google's mobile operating system omits the month of December. The People app lets users bookmark friends' birthdays and other important dates on a calendar. But some users of Android 4.2, the system's newest update, are complaining they can't note December dates in the app because its calendar skips from November to January. December simply does not exist.

 

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